Can't Go Home Again
by miranda0
Summary: An AU fic centered around Molly Carpenter, bounty hunter. (See the Intro for details on the AU.) Rating for language and adult situations.
1. Author's Intro

Author's clumsy little notes: I wrote this for someone who wanted a story about a female bounty hunter on the seedier side of town. I have no idea how my twisted brain married that idea to an AU Molly Carpenter, but it did. For those Dresden fans, this would take place a year after the end of _Changes._ It does obliquely reference information we do not find until the end of _Ghost Story, _so you have been warned.

In this AU, the supernatural does exist, but the council and magic as we know it in the Dresden universe does not. At least, Harry wasn't the powerful wizard we know and love, and Molly doesn't know if she has an ounce of innate magic. Magic is far more of an Acme-do-it-yourself kit. (And vampires? Aren't the vampires we know.) I changed a few other things here and there but I don't think it's important to know what they are. This is just my take on another version of Molly.

I also borrowed one other character because it fit the requirements of what prompted me to write this in the first place. Sorry, Clark Johnson, but my version of Brian Gamble is a lot more fun than your version of Brian Gamble.

My deep apologies to Charity Carpenter, whom I truly love, for forcing her to become what the story needed.

I don't own the Dresden Files characters, and God knows that if I did own Brian Gamble, I wouldn't have the time to write anything.


	2. Prologue

Harry said there would be days like these.

There really is no such thing as going home again, and it grates on Molly as she spins on her knee, shotgun at the ready, checking behind her for the faintest sign of movement.

_Oh an easy job, and back home to boot; just find the kid, get the contents of the jump drive, simple in and out_, she muses darkly. It's not like Reading, Pennsylvania is a big place to start with, and hidey-holes for kids like Manny aren't a dime-a-dozen here. Reading is simply an overgrown town, and the underbelly hierarchy presently in place doesn't exactly have a lot of depth.

But sometimes, even the most familiar places can surprise you, and that's how Molly found herself at the back entrance of the Pagoda, overlooking the city, holed up with her small arsenal, waiting for the rest of the Daybreak brothers to arrive to take her out.

_Fucking vampires. _

Dogma, her sometime-handler, sometime-partner, full-time pain-in-the-ass, suggested the assignment to her. Nakamura wanted his files back and he didn't want any officials learning of his black market leanings. So he put word on the wire, and Molly foolishly viewed this as almost a vacation. To be back home, to work a city she knew like breathing…the entire case sounded like a nice change of pace after being stuck up in Detroit for three weeks, smelling rotting cabbage through the tiny window in her perch across the street from the headquarters of United Auto Workers, waiting for the union's Vice-President to finally show his puny face so she could tranq him and haul him back to Portland to face those nasty racketeering charges.

One 15-year-old boy running with his old gang back in Reading after a short stint in the Big Apple suddenly sounds almost charming in comparison.

Nakamura is certain that Manny doesn't know what he's carrying, what is on the USB drive that he brought with him to Reading. Manny was supposed to hand the drive over to some guy named Pulse at midnight yesterday down on 6th Street Bridge.

That was the plan, yesterday, to find Pulse and replace him at the drop. Basic background showed Pulse was part of a new, relatively unknown gang that had infiltrated Reading during Molly's prolonged absence and that they holed up in an abandoned warehouse (practically the greatest natural resource of Reading at this point) down near the Outlets.

That last part didn't sit well with Molly. Gangs tend to avoid the high-traffic areas, and this one parked themselves spitting distance from the busiest portion of town.

In retrospect, it really should have been her first clue.


	3. Chapter 1

Two days ago, a different world ago, Molly walked into Levitts Bar down on 183 at 2 PM, looking exactly like the bad-ass she had molded herself into. Thigh high leather boots worn over her tightest skinny jeans, T-shirt nicked from a clothesline in Charlestown (strangely still smelling of its previous owner, a man who apparently reeked testosterone and danger), black leather jacket with more zippers than sense, pumpkin-colored hair falling fetchingly to her shoulders underneath the leather chauffer's hat, and most importantly the wraparound sunglasses she'd admired on a man practicing archery back at the dojo in Cleveland.

Sigh. Stealing those from his nightstand after she rode him into oblivion had been one of the highlights of her year.

No one was going to mistake Molly for her mother. Not today.

Cord was late, but that was to be expected. After all, he didn't know that today was his lucky day, that he had a date with Molly Carpenter of all people, that his good luck charm was even now heading for the exit. So Molly waited, drinking down the Cranberry-and-Sprite she'd ordered from the barmaid, a bland and bleached blonde who reinforced Molly's opinion that women were, on the whole, idiots (and no drinking when working; it was the hard and fast rule that served her well until 10 PM every night).

Thank God that she dealt almost exclusively with men in this line of work. It sure as hell beat working at the Lancome counter down at the mall (why did she ever take that job?).

At 2:22 PM, he walked through the door, through the smoke and the barmaid's face brightened like a teenager looking at the Bieber. "Cord!" she nearly squealed, and it was all Molly could do to not take the dagger resting neatly on her thigh and hurl it straight through the blonde's trachea. No woman should ever make sounds like that…unless sex was directly involved.

The barmaid had a Yuengling Lager uncapped in no time in front of him, letting her fingers linger on his forearms. "Long night?"

"Yeah." Gravel on sandstone, that voice Molly remembered from her long-forgotten youth, and shivers ran down her spine. _Focus._ "Might be a good time to go away for a few days."

All seven patrons of the bar heard that clearly enough.

The barmaid pouted in what she apparently thought was a comely way. "Hack would never let me leave town. Not even with…" her fingers drifted up his arms.

Cord caught them in a quick and angry movement. "Not now, Sally." His eyes took in the patrons of the bar, quickly honing in on Molly as the answer to "one of these things is not like the other".

Seated as she was, directly across from him at the bar, she had no trouble watching him while still looking completely bored and uninterested. Those sunglasses were a plus. If the archer was still in Cleveland when this whole thing was done, maybe she'd swing by to thank him profusely. On her knees, even.

Cord grinned wolfishly at her, sensing her attention if not her direct interest, and eased himself off his stool, practically strutting his way toward her (if an almost-50 year old man with the beginnings of emphysema could actually strut). "What is a fine piece of woman like you doing in a place like this?"

Molly said nothing.

He sat himself beside her. "Oh c'mon, darlin', it's not like we all don't know that you're not from these parts." He took in her long legs. "What brings you to a backwater bar in the middle of a Wednesday looking like you belong in an upscale red light district?"

He took two fingers, then, and raked them against the supple leather on her right thigh, moving those fingers up, across her middle.

Well, that's as far as he got before Molly grabbed them and broke one, driving him to his knees. "Bitch!" he spat.

She knew what would come next, and grabbed her Glock from the small of her back before Glim, his second, could find his knife. "Nice to know you remember me, Cord."

_Oh God he knew that voice._

Of course, his addled brain put the wrong name to it. "Charity?"

Just for that, she added a little torque to her grip on his right hand and he squelched in pain. "I'm not my mother, and you damn well should remember that." She looked over her shoulder to the ubiquitous back room. "Just wanted a little talk." She hauled him up, then, and dragged him, walking backwards to cover herself with the Glock, into the Thieves Den.

"This isn't going to go well for you," Molly chided as she threw Cord into the first chair she saw. "For one thing, you are a complete asshole. For another, you disregarded the first rule of my universe: Never, ever fucking talk about my mother." She straddled him on the chair, then, knowing it would unnerve him and throw him off balance. "Especially you."

Cord had the basic sense to look a little scared. Granted, he was someone with some authority in Reading's close-knit underworld, but Molly couldn't find it in herself to care. The only reason Cord was still alive was because of a scrap of kindness she found in her heart all those years ago, and he owed her.

And he would continue to owe her for the rest of his miserable existence, if she had her way.

The peeling green paint, the practically de-felted pool table—these added to the ambience of "losers and their lives together" as Molly did the one thing she knew would expedite this interview.

She slowly rocked her hips at him.

"Oh, fuck," Cord rasped, trying to move her off of him. "Fuck, Molly, what is it you want? I'll tell you what you want to know, just please don't—"

"Please don't?" she whispered now, in his right ear, knowing exactly the kind of torture she was inflicting. "That's not what you said that first night you taught me how to do this. Your words were more along the lines of 'keep going, honey, that feels so good'." The pain of those words, of that time of her life, seeped through every syllable.

Cord honestly looked like he might cry, still trying to push her off of his lap as she asserted more of her weight, pinning him, grinding against him, feeling him stiffen. "Ah, there we are," she nearly purred, cursing herself for sounding exactly like Charity in that moment.

"God, Molly, please, just stop. I'll tell you anything. I'll tell you everything," Cord whimpered, throwing his head back to get her hot breath away from his ear.

"Good." Molly abruptly stood, then. She produced a picture. "Tell me."

He did.


	4. Chapter 2

She laid rubber getting to the other side of town, feeling almost as if she should apologize to Ruthie, her Dodge Charger, but something had to take the brunt of the rage melting her veins, and unfortunately the tires won that contest.

Better than the body.

Cord had been a wealth of information about this upstart gang. He knew their hangouts, knew their habits, and knew that there was a strange hierarchy within the group that called themselves Daybreak (which sounded much more like an early morning news show than the name of a gang). "There's two kinds," he said as he pointed into the photograph. "See those ones with the black insignia on their jackets? They call those the Mothers. Kind of the grunts of the operation. You can see them out and about. They tend to keep their noses clean, at least from our standpoint, and we don't traffic much that conflicts."

A young, fresh gang that doesn't traffic cocaine? Practically unheard of in Reading.

Cord had agreed. "They do some, but they seem to deal in meth and other substances we don't know much about. But there doesn't seem to be much competition, so we have an understanding."

But he shuddered as he said it.

"Now, look at the other ones, the ones with the white angel wings," he continued. "Those are the Seraphim."

Strangely Biblical name for a gang, and rather cumbersome, yes?

"It all stems back to some joke that has to do with some television show called _Angel_," he sighed. "Don't really matter to me. Just know that they don't respond well when you call that breed the Angels. They are rather, um, vigorous in making sure you don't make that same mistake twice." He pointed to a scar on his neck, near his hairline on the left side. "Fucker nearly gutted me with his hands."

It was what Cord wasn't saying, however, that left Molly in a muddle of her thoughts. He implied things, but didn't outright say them—that was often the language of the underbelly and she spoke it well enough. It's just that _what_ he was implying seemed…unsavory, even by Cord's very low standards.

"You never see the Seraphim around. Only at night. During the day they hole up down on Murray."

What, like some kind of vampire tribute tribe?

The joke fell flat and Cord had paled slightly. "Something very much like that."

After getting the address and enough information to get into their building, Cord couldn't resist a parting shot. "You take care, Molly. Was always proud of you."

She'd slapped him hard enough to draw blood from his nose as she walked out.

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Climbing wasn't Molly's favorite activity. She had the build for it, being her mother's daughter and all—the broad shoulders, strong back that come from her farming forefathers, but scaling four stories with your hands wearing thigh-high leather boots should be left to the professionals.

But the only truly safe way into the Daybreak warehouse was through the roof, and during the day. Cord had been very specific that she needed to be up in those rafters, near the skylights, while it was clearly light outside.

Well, if these idiots were playing some kind of vampires-are-cool game, she could bite (haha). But she could also use that warped thinking to her advantage.

She finally managed to lever herself through the largest skylight on the western side of the building, crawling smoothly down into a wide pool of light. She knew she'd been heard—it would be impossible not to, as that skylight needed some serious WD-40—and so, instead of trying to scope out the place and look for vantage points, she stood stock still in her pool of light and waited.

It didn't take long.

She was greeted by two of them, identified by the patches on their jackets as Mothers, each holding a sawed-off shotgun.

Nice to know that the classics would never go out of style here in Reading.

In fact, she'd brought one of her own, and leveled it at the Mother on the right.

"What the fuck you doing?" he growled, and she realized with that voice that this was an overgrown boy, no older than 16 despite the scars on his face.

"I'm pointing my homemade flamethrower at you, sweetcheeks."

Harry, at least, would have been proud of that line.

The second Mother, who seemed much calmer, pointed his shotgun directly at her chest, center mass. "Miss, I'm gonna ask you to put that down now."

She trained the gun on him, then. "You first."

He chuckled and shook his head. "What, you new around here, looking for a squat? This is the home of Daybreak and we don't take kindly to sharing."

_Don't take kindly_…the kind of phrase only heard in places like good old Eastern PA, which is Redneck without the southern accent.

"Yeah, I'm new here, but I'm looking for someone. Some guy named Pulse."

The boys exchanged a look at that. Lousy poker faces.

"What do you want with Pulse?"

She chuckled. "That's between him and me. You wouldn't know where he is, would you?"

They exchanged another look. "We can take you to him if you put down that gun."

She laughed out loud at that, and it was interesting to gauge that her mere laugh unnerved these two boys. What, were the wannabe vampires also afraid of women? "Oh, no. No, I don't think so. I like standing right where I am. And I'm not putting down Bessie here. She's the kind of girl that needs a woman's touch to work right."

Did 16 year old just _blush?_

"Before you tell me that I have no choice, please look carefully at the skylight."

Only then did they see the wires. Two sets for two completely different uses. Molly was pretty sure they didn't see the second set, which was probably for the best, as it gave them what they thought was at least one advantage.

She went on. "I've rigged it to blow your roof wide open. I'm told that some of your tribe here _don't take kindly_ to that much sunlight."

The older boy frowned. "We'd have heard you setting that many charges."

"You apparently aren't up to speed then, my friend. All I needed was three charges courtesy of a friend of mine and about 1000 feet of detcord. Boom."

This produced the desired effect. "Alright." The older boy grabbed a walkie from his belt. "We got a special visitor. She asked for Pulse."

"_On my way,"_ came the response, and Molly was surprised at her personal, visceral reaction to the voice on the other end. Like she wanted to lick honey off his throat.

_What in the hell was that, exactly?_

That, apparently, was the harbinger of one of the most stunning men Molly had ever seen. And Molly had seen Harry.

He resembled the archer, in a way. A younger version, with similar sandy hair, but his hair was longer, and it suited the youth in his features. Strong jaw, a wide smile, earrings, and the most complex eyes completed the picture from the neck up.

Looking away from those eyes took serious willpower on her part, and Molly chided herself for being reduced to some sort of primal lust. _Definitely going back to Cleveland when this was all through. _

The neck down was entirely another matter in terms of lust, and she felt disadvantaged.

In her boots, Molly guessed she was of a height with him, so average height. And while the overall build might be described as average, as in within typical limits, there was nothing average about the body in front of her. It oozed raw sex appeal and testosterone and more than a hint of danger (something Molly had always coveted about Harry and dear God that was not helping matters at the moment) through finely sculpted arms, strong shoulders, and firm legs.

The overall effect made her honestly want to slide to her knees in worship.

But Molly Carpenter was never going to be her mother.

Someday, looking back at this moment, she would thank a God she never believed in for the anger that overtook her.

She leveled Bessie at him in instinct, in anger, in frustration that she could share any kind of similarities to other women, let alone Charity. "And who exactly are you?"

He held up his hands (fascinating hands, truth be told) in apparent surrender. He also appeared unarmed. "You were looking for Pulse."

"Yeah?" she snarled. She was more than just her body, even as it begged and screamed at her to stop being so stupid and _give in_ to these strange feelings.

"Why are you looking for him?" He nodded at the two Mothers, and they fell back into the shadows of the doorway.

"Well, he's going to try to buy something tonight that I have a vested interest in."

Elegant eyebrows arch up at that. He turned suddenly back to the two Mothers. "Leave us."

Molly listened to their retreating footfalls and forced herself to train Bessie back at this man's throat.

He smiled widely at her, and she felt her body wanting to relax at the sight. It was strangely calming and arousing all at once.

_What in fucking hell was happening here?_

"You have no idea what you just stepped into here, do you?" He stepped closer to her, closer to the pool of light than the Mothers had been, and seemed to…oh God, was he smelling her? "No, you really have no idea. This is some simple transaction for you. I'm going to give you some terrific advice. Walk away. This isn't worth the money or the trouble. You'll get the next one."

What?

"Oh, I don't think so." That was just her stubborn kicking in. Maybe this wasn't worth it. Nakamura had taken worse falls, she was sure, but he seemed so passionate about this one, and while she didn't owe him directly, she felt an obligation to see this through. For Shiro's sake if nothing else, for the fallen soldier so that his sacrifice for her life so many years ago would not be in vain.

The least she could do was give his brother her all.

He sighed and chuckled, and her heart began to melt. The words tumbled out before she could stop them. "What are you?"

"Me? I'm a man with a plan."

She narrowed her eyes at him.

"No, really. You can put that gun down at least. You're not getting out of here the way you came in, and right now you're completely safe so long as you stay in that section of light you're currently standing in."

She chuckled. "You really think you're some kind of vampire, don't you?"

Those eyes flashed at her, and at once she felt terror grip her kidneys. "I don't think I'm some kind of vampire. I'm a very special kind of vampire." He licked his lips then, once, and the action somehow seemed to have a vague effect on her knees.

_I am not my mother, dammit_.

"You do have a lot of moxie, I'll give you that." He sat down on the floor then, crossing his legs, two feet from her pool of light…that she just noticed was getting weaker.

She lowered Bessie and set her carefully down, joining the man on the floor, while grabbing her Glock and checking the chamber. Fully loaded, just how she likes it.

"Moxie is a good word for it," he agreed. "Although it's really far more complicated than that. I'm a Siren Vampire. We're fairly rare, as vampires go."

She found it in herself to laugh. "And what does that mean?"

"It means," he lowered his voice, drawing her in, "that I can bend people to my will. Sometimes just by hearing my voice. It's more or less lethal to all women."

"All guys have the tendency to think they are somewhat lethal to women," Molly feigned a yawn even as her heart hammered in her chest. She could feel that delicious pull, to push herself over to where he was and settle herself roughly on his thighs.

He grinned at her, and the predatory nature of that grin put Cord to shame. "You are a feisty one. I'm a Siren…my kind can read you like a book."

Enough of this. "Ok. So let me get this straight. You're sitting there to convince me to not interrupt your meeting tonight. You're Pulse, aren't you?"

"It's one of the names I use. You can call me Brian."

The name sounded so pedantic that she couldn't help the honest laugh. "Brian? It makes you sound like some accountant in Jersey."

He shook his head. "Nope. I was never an accountant in Jersey. Actually, I'm from LA."

"A vampire who lives in California? That makes no sense."

Brian stretched his arms wide. "Thus, my exodus to the East Coast." He looked so inviting then, so dangerously open. "I'm not going to let you have the drive, Molly. You can stop thinking that's going to happen right now."

"How in the hell do you know my name?"

Shrug. "It's written into you. I can smell it on you."

"This is a serious long-con mind-fuck you've got going on in here, isn't it?"

"No con, and not really a mind-fuck nearly so much as a glimpse to the other side of what's out there in the world. You pride yourself on being gritty and real and getting shit done on either side of the tracks, but you have no idea what's really in this world, how truly safe your little world actually is from predators like me."

Molly stands up as if surveying the room, then suddenly lunges for his arm, using all her strength and leverage to pull him into the sunlight.

For a guy sitting on the floor with no leverage and an arm she probably yanked out of its socket, he's surprisingly hard to move. That move should have easily hauled his ass into the sunshine. Instead, she's perhaps dragged him half a foot—but it's enough to get his fingers into the light, and she dropped his arm reflexively as she felt the current go up his arm and smelled burning meat.

He moved his hand out of the beam of light, cradling it to his chest, and she could see the red welts appearing on the back of his fingers as his hand literally smoked on his chest.

"Satisfied? With that test, at least?"

Well, then. Brian is some kind of vampire, even if he's not in any classification of vampire she's known about before.

"Alrighty then. I can see we're not going to get anywhere on this end. You've got some strange ass shit going on down here and I don't think even my feminine wiles could change your mind about the drive. I'm going to get that drive, Brian, even if I have to pry it out of your still-sizzling hand as I introduce you to my new best friend, Mr. Sunshine."

He laughed, still cradling the hand, then looked up at her. "You're welcome to try, but I don't think you'll succeed. The best that you can hope for is that I'll restrain myself when the time comes."

Erotic thoughts came unbidden into her mind, and she found herself screaming aloud: "I'm not Charity, dammit!"

"No, you're not." The words were almost whispered. "You use sex and the promise of sex and a shitton of flirting to get what you want when the opportunity presents itself. Which on the surface, does seem to be a large part of your mother's M.O."

"Shut up!"

"But you are definitely your own person. I respect the sheer volume of control you must have. Every other woman, when I send that much shine her way just throws herself at me. You fought me. That takes immense strength and guts. And courage."

Why did his compliments make her feel so satisfied?

"Well, thanks for the vote of confidence."

"You can't get him back, Molly."

Her blood turned to ice in her veins. "What did you just say?"

Brian rose to his feet. "Harry. You can't get him back."

Reflexively, without conscious thought, she raised Bessie back at him. "What the hell do you know about Harry?"

"He made his sacrifice. He chose to sacrifice himself to save you. And no amount of whatever you perceive to be good in this world is going to change the fact that he's gone. No amount of good deeds in your ledger is ever going to tally enough to turn back time." He favored her with a weak but honest smile. "He's gone. It's time to accept that and move on."

And with that, Molly made her first mistake.

She roared at him and lunged, bringing Bessie up to the soft area underneath his jaw. "You know nothing about anything. You understand me? And don't you ever, ever talk about Harry to me ever again."

Brian looked upon her with sad eyes. "I'm sorry. It was the only way."

That was when she looked down to realize that she wasn't standing in sunlight anymore.

And that was when Brian lazily put his hand on her face.

And _oh Jesus God oh fuck oh…_She could feel _everything_. She felt his heartbeat drawing hers into tandem with his, breathing the same breaths. She felt her arousal at being touched by this man, by a god, by her personal Achilles' heel. She felt his desire for her, the realization that he didn't engage in this activity typically for his own personal reasons, sublimating his instincts and desires for intimacy and sex for the greater good of his people, to build…

…to build an empire.

But she was here, and she was now, and she felt how delicious she felt to him as he wrapped those strong arms around her and captured her lips with his. Molly had heard the word _rapture_ before, but never understood the concept until that precise moment.

They sank to their knees, hands tangling in hair, bodies pressed full up against each other. _More_, her body demanded. He was surprisingly gentle as he removed her jacket, her hat, running his hands through her hair once or twice before moving on to her shirt, lifting it off her torso deftly.

_Just the way she had always imagined Harry doing it_.

And just like that, her brain cleared enough from the fog, hitting the cold hard truth of Harry. This man was not Harry.

No one could ever be enough for her to be Harry.

"_You're a hell of a woman, Molly Carpenter."_ It had been his benediction to her.

And now it was going to save her.

She pulled back abruptly, stood up. "I'm not going to give in to you today." Her body began screaming at her, vile and unwanted. Even as Brian looked up at her with a smirk on his lips, wrapping those arms back around her torso and burying his face between her breasts, and her whole body screamed for her to just relax and give in…_he will never be Harry_.

She pushed his face away then, more gently than she wanted to but appropriate under the circumstances, reaching behind him for her Tee and jacket.

Brian sagged back onto his heels then. She could see his confusion and also his raw desire for her and wondered if the Siren's call started working both ways on him. Maybe it just really had been that long for him.

Maybe he actually desired _her_. That was something she was not going to contemplate.

She grabbed Bessie, then, and stepped into the waning spot of sunlight. "I'm sorry, Brian. I really am." And with that, she grabbed the second set of wires that would raise her up, balancing the bag of feed that she had so carefully put on that pulley, and pulled herself out of the building and into the last of the day's rays of sunshine, immensely grateful that Brian couldn't follow.

A girl can only handle so much, after all.


	5. Chapter 3

Molly sat for a long while in front of Tuxedos 4 U, the dilapidated, rather small one level that sat conspicuously at the corner of 5th Street and Vining, just before 5th Street opened up to all those plazas headed northwest and out of town, toward Temple and the world's best Dairy Queen. The shamrock green roof and peeling white paint on the clapboard made the building only more of a sore thumb. Hell of a place to house a Hispanic gang.

When she had finally made it back to Ruthie, she found a note stuck underneath the wipers, ostensibly from one of the Mothers. _Don't start something that you can't finish_.

Well wasn't that sweet.

She'd driven to 5th Street immediately and found that she was ravenous. Despite promising herself to eat responsibly and healthy during this job, she found herself at the Bojangles drive-thru, several orders of fries and one very unhealthy fried-something-or-other at the ready.

She took a long pull on her water and sat back into Ruthie's comfortable leather seat. No activity in Tuxedo land—still a little too early for the _hombres_ to be congregating—and Molly steeled herself to make the three phone calls she really, really wasn't interested in making.

She paused over her phone, number already punched in, then quickly erased and changed her mind. _Ease into it, kiddo. Try the easier one first._

He picked up on the second ring. "Waldo Butters."

"Butters?" Molly hoped her voice sounded calmer to Butters than it did to her own ears. "Butters, it's Molly."

A long, excruciating pause. "Well, shit."

She flinched as if he'd struck her face. She'd really hoped for a better reception from the little Medical Examiner. She knew that they were still afraid of her—all of them were, after her breakdown, _after_…but that's why she'd had to leave, to pull herself out of Chicago for a while, to get her head on straight. After nearly a year, she thought maybe things might have smoothed over and they wouldn't hold her final, terrible act against her.

"So glad to hear how much you love me." Damn that tremble.

"Oh, kid," Butters paused. "Oh, kid, I'm sorry. We've been worried sick about you."

"I still send you postcards."

He snorted. "Sure. Postcards. From major cities. Molly, you could have people sending them to us for all I know."

"I'm not," and she groaned inwardly at the defensive nature of her chin rising up. Thank God he couldn't see her.

"So that means you really are in…" She heard him fumbling around on his desk, probably once again disorganized chaos since it had not seen her helpful hands to clean it up for a year. "You're back home?"

"That's why I'm calling. I need the favor."

Not "a" favor. "A" favor was what she was about to call in from other people. Only Butters would know about "the" favor.

He sighed, and she waited him out.

"You sure about this?"

"Ha," she spat. "I hate admitting that I need any kind of help here, Butters, and you know that. If this shit wasn't going down tonight, I would not be making this phone call."

"It's that important?"

_No. I'm that scared._ "Yes, Butters, it's that important." Brian knew way too much about one Molly Carpenter for her liking. That had very bad implications for this case.

Brian had already known to expect her.

That meant she was brought in on purpose instead of it being a random assignment she happened to pick up. And if she was put on the case on purpose by Nakamura, then something in here would ultimately relate back to Harry, and she was just one more chess piece in the puzzle.

And she would still die for Harry, no matter what anyone said.

If it really was as bad as she thought, she was going to need this kind of help.

She could hear Butters pacing now, shuffling from one point in his office to the other, pointedly trying (and failing) to evade the one-man polka suit that he kept with him at all times, the living reminder of what he had lost, what they all lost that night.

"She's not gonna like it. And she may not call him for you."

"I know the risks."

"Worse, she may send Kincaid out after you."

She sighed. "I know the risks, dammit! Someday Kincaid and I will settle that score, but it won't be today. Besides, I'm far too valuable to her alive."

_The last and final mystery_.

"I'm not going to talk you out of it?"

"Unless you and Murph and my ersatz-brother can show up in Reading within the next hour? Nothing doing. I know he's got to be close by."

"Alright, then. I'll make the call." A pause. "Molly?"

_Oh no, here it comes._ "Yeah?"

"If you make it through this—and you will—can you promise me that you'll be home for the holidays?"

Butters doesn't mean Reading, the place where she grew up.

Butters means _home_.

"I won't make promises that I can't keep, and you know it."

"We need you. I'm not gonna lie. I thought we could handle all of it but…we need you." He paused here, and she could see him running his hand through his tangle of kinky black and pepper curls. "And you need us."

The silence fell on. "If my heart can heal enough, I'll make it home. I just can't envision walking those streets without…"

"It gets easier," he offered, and she wanted to snarl at him and scream at him and tell him that he doesn't fucking _get it_, that she can never be in Chicago, in her true home, without _him_.

She couldn't answer that. "If she refuses, let me know." And she disconnected before the sob could fully reach her throat.

And that was the easiest of the calls she would make.

The next was to Murph herself. Karrin Murphy had been busted back to Sergeant on the Chicago PD and was a laughing stock after what really was a series of bafflingly horrible accidents, none of which had to do with Murphy, but they all ended up riding out on her coattails.

The argument—er, phone call entailed the brief battle of wills that she and Murphy always seemed to engage in, followed by the typical derision of Molly's choice to "run away", and lastly the grudging admission, like Butters, that the gang needed Molly to come back to Chicago.

She knew it must have sent knives into Murphy's intestines to have to say that.

She also knew that meant it was really getting _bad_.

Murphy kept her on the phone long enough for her gambit to pay off.

The one thing her addled brain had managed to notice before ziplining herself back out of the warehouse was the lettered tattoo on Brian's right forearm.

_Gamble_.

And Murphy's simple background check of one Brian Gamble from Los Angeles turned up a wealth of information—the most striking point of which was that Brian Gamble was dead.

Murphy agreed to send what information she had via email to Molly's phone—after all, Molly couldn't use it to kill the guy.

Murphy couldn't resist her parting shot across the bow, however. "Harry would want you to come back."

"Bitch," Molly hung up.


	6. Chapter 4

The third outgoing call Molly needed to make would be the easiest at first. Getting the answers she wanted? Yeah, good luck with that.

Four rings. "This is Dog. Whaddya got?"

She'd expected the voicemail. "Pick up that goddamn motherfucking phone, Dogma, or so help me God I will find you and whatever whore you're nailing and—"

"Jesus woman!" Dog cut in, breathing a little too quickly for her liking, but at least she'd gotten him to the phone. "Why is it when I don't pick up the phone you always assume the worst?"

"Hmmmm. That would be because A. you're always looking to get your dick wet; B. if you were out of the office you'd have switched to the secondary voicemail, and C. I can hear Sheryl whimpering in the background to come back and fuck you hard."

"Fucking cunt!" Sheryl hissed from somewhere.

"Whoopsie, didn't turn off the answering machine yet, did you? Always good to hear your dulcet tones, Sheryl. Maybe we can make a threesome when I'm back in—"

"You've got my attention, Molly, now don't fuck it up. What. Do. You. Want."

Oh, right. "So, when exactly did Nakamura tell you that I had to handle this case?"

Silence.

"Don't even try to tell me it was a random coincidence. Because one of the gangs I ran into knew a whole lot more about me than they should."

Silence.

"You've sent me to die, y'know."

She was surprised she'd let that slip out, even if she did expect it was partially true.

He hissed through his teeth. "Don't be so melodramatic, Molly. I would never send you on a case where you would die. You're my partner and you close cases. I'd be an idiot to lose you."

Molly had always had a talent for recognizing lies, a talent inherited from hearing them too many times from people she trusted and loved (or at least trusted and loved at one point in her life). She could even spot the lie that was embedded within truth.

"What did he tell you?"

Silence.

"Jesus, Dog, if you were gonna sell me out, at least have the common courtesy to own it. At least we'd be square so I didn't hit you with some sort of death curse or something."

She heard the phone clatter, then, and scuffling and shuffling and the weak protests of Sheryl's voice, followed by a vicious door slam. Then more clatter. "Alright. I'll tell you. But I didn't sell you out, and I'm pretty sure Nakamura did this on purpose to make sure you saw it through."

"It's not about what's on the drive, then."

"No, girl, I think it's exactly about what's on the drive. But I think Nakamura wanted you to be tempted enough to see what was on there yourself."

"That makes absolutely no sense and you know it. We're bounty hunters. We don't look inside the envelope; we just secure the package and deliver it."

A long pause. "Nakamura wanted you to be pushed enough to have to read the contents."

"And threatening my life and my safety was the best way to achieve that?"

She could see Dog in her minds' eye, twirling that pencil around as he rocked himself side to side in the most ancient of wooden office chairs. "I think this goes up a lot higher than Nakamura."

"That's bullshit! It doesn't go any higher than Nakamura! This whole world doesn't go higher than that guy. I mean, you might as well be discussing the bloody Queen of England because she's about the only person with more clout on the entire fucking planet!"

The silence threatened to overwhelm. "It's not safe to talk about this in the open. I mean, _I'm_ safe," and she heard him tap the pencil onto their secure system, "but you're out there, in the open, exposed, and on a regular cell phone to boot. It's not safe. I've told you all I can without actually jeopardizing your life."

She did not disconnect. She knew there would be more. It was only a question of how that more would be delivered to her.

"Well thanks a lot there, partner. So glad to know that you've got my back."

"I've always got your back, Molly. Ever since your old lady introduced us, I've always had your back."

_Click._

Well, shit.

Dog's cryptic message meant that she now had to make a decision—wait out the boys at the Tuxedo Junction there, or drive back across town to fetch whatever the hell it is that Dog may have left for her (assuming she interpreted his cryptic message correctly). All while waiting on a phone call from the Divine that may or may not come through.

And right on cue, her phone rang. She checked the caller ID…and it's blank. Not even "Blocked". Blank. But her phone was ringing, and that meant only one person.

_Thank Christ_.

"Hello?" Her heart hammered into her throat.

"Hello, Molly."

His voice was deeper than she recalled it. Maybe time does that to a person, maybe sorrow tinged the timbre that deep.

"I…" she stopped. "I don't even know what to call you anymore."

"I will always be your father, Molly. That has not changed."

"Well, hi, Dad." _She will not cry, will not cry, will NOT cry…._

"Hi, my baby girl." Such a deep, calm, soothing voice. "I was hoping to hear from you again. But I suspect, since I received the message from Ivy, that this is not a social call."

_Well, gee, you don't exactly pick up the phone to have nice social conversations with a Knight of the Cross these days. They're kind of a busy bunch, Dad. And you should know, since you're their Champion._

"Nope," she wiped carefully at her eyes now, making sure her mascara wasn't running, swallowed the choke down her throat. "I'm in over my head here. I could use a little help." She bit back more tears. "I was hoping you were still guarding Father Forthill in New York on his furlough."

A long and ragged sigh. She imagined him pinching the bridge of his nose now. "No, the good Father and I returned nearly a fortnight ago to Chicago."

"You're home?"

"No," he said slowly, "I'm not home. The Order had a new mission for me. They sent me west, to Los Angeles, to work on a particular problem that quite honestly I haven't the faintest idea how to solve."

"I hear you," she muttered.

He paused. "How bad is it?"

Molly took a moment, eased the seat back in the car to stretch out her cramped legs. "It's pretty bad. It's some kind of vampire tribe I've never seen before. And they knew about me before I even got here." _And about Harry_.

"What's the job?"

"Simple data drive retrieval."

She heard his low, rumbling chuckle. "It's never just a simple retrieval any more, sweetheart."

"It's for Nakamura."

She felt the energy change on the other end of the line. "Someone stole the drive from Nakamura?"

"Yeah. He asked for me specifically to get it back."

Molly had not seen her father in just over a year. The last time she had faced him, she directly disobeyed an order he gave her (she didn't work for the Order and she didn't need to heed all their rules and regulations) and went after Harry. Went after Kincaid. And lost more than just her friends in the bargain.

But even the distance and the time and the pain between them could not hide the sheer volume of feeling she received from him over the line in that silence. Her father had said she was his "sensitive one" and she had often wondered exactly what he meant by that.

Her father was afraid.

Michael Carpenter did not get afraid. He just grabbed his scabbard, grabbed his shield, got on his knees and prayed. And then he got up and faced whatever it is that was in front of him and cut it down until he could get a good night's sleep.

Michael Carpenter was afraid.

And he was 3000 miles away.

The words scrambled out before she could stop them. "Am I going to die, Daddy?"

The rumble through the phone was surprisingly powerful. "Not on my watch, Molly. Never on my watch."

"Dog said he thought I was meant to read the contents of the drive." She fought to keep the tremble out of her voice.

"That drive…it's dangerous."

"Well, obviously," she snorted.

"No, you mistake my meaning. It's not just that you have been put in danger to retrieve it. The information itself is very dangerous. Greater forces are at play here."

_Oh shit oh shit oh shit_.

Michael Carpenter's definition of "dangerous forces" meant something not to be trifled with.

As in, vampires? Least of Molly's worries on the horizon.

"So then how does a 15 year old dime-bag courier end up with this important information in the ass end of Pennsylvania?"

"This kind of information likes to travel the uncertain path."

The other problem with her father? Mr. Cryptic.

"So what you're telling me, more or less, is that this information is even more valuable than Nakamura knows, that I can't let it fall into the wrong hands no matter what, and that I've got to do this on my own."

"Yes, yes, and no." He paused. "As it happens, I know someone who happens to be traveling right near you. Someone who can give you genuine help."

She almost gasped with relief. Genuine help from Michael Carpenter meant the equivalent of an army.


End file.
